Instasham Culture Jam

In this culture jam I am challenging the idea that people’s Instagram photos represent their true lives. Users often purposefully choose desirable locations in which to take their photos, angles which compliment their figures and clothing that trick their audience into believing they lead a desirable lifestyle. In addition, I am making a statement against Instagram’s parent company Facebook who has repeatedly been used as a tool for volatile political discourse. I chose a photo of President Trump at St. John’s Church in which he forcibly removed lawful protesters for photos that represent him as a Christian man. Proponents would argue that he is anything but. I merged a photo of protesters at the same location to demonstrate how easy it is to fake one’s reality on Instagram and the protesters removal. Iconography is hidden within.

In creating this culture jam I learned how to use the clone tool, layers, layer masks, the transform function and how to manipulate texts from images to create a believable end result. I also learned how to find assets that worked for my needs and how to install fonts. 

SpaceX Starship Development

Rocket videos are taken from NasaSpaceFlight.com which show the past year and half of Starship development, and the ending animation is SpaceX’s vision for the final rocket. The music is a remix of Eye of The Tiger. By showing all the failures unabashedly I am mirroring Elon Musk’s transparency in the development of Starship; which is in stark contrast to how all other space companies and agencies, like Blue Origin and NASA, operate. This video reflects upon the renewed worldwide interest in space exploration as it becomes privatized, and thanks to Starship, the likelihood that access to space will extend to most people within two decades.

While creating this remix I learned how to use Adobe Premier. I learned how to make use of the time line in order to add, extend and order video sequences. I learned how to normalize audio gain and how to reduce and remove unwanted audio distortions. I also learned how to change the speed of frames. 

Reclaimed Home

For me a home is a place where family is, it’s also a comforting place. This piece represents both those ideas. This home is a house my family is having built in an eco-village. We believe strongly in living sustainably and connected to nature.
Yet this piece goes a bit further into what home means to all of us as humans, and as animals and explores a place between modern living and how humans lived and survived in the wild for most of our history as nomads. I also wanted to explore what it might look like, and mean, to have nature reclaim the modern spaces we live in.

While creating this project I learned how to use many of the core features in Sketchup including but not limited to the push/pull tool, the line tool, orbit, zoom and pan tools as well as the follow me tool. I also learned how to make a video of my final project using the scenes manager.